So They Began
by Kathryn Claire O'Connor
Summary: #1 in the Junior Initiative series. Agent Romanoff comes to Fury with a problem, inspiring him to start a whole new secret division of S.H.I.E.L.D. and the Avengers with the help of Agents Coulson and Hill. But who are the agents of this new division, and how does Fury get his hands on them? Pre-movie five-shot.
1. Chapter 1

**Here we go: a new series and my first stab at writing the Avengers. It is AU (The movieverse timeline has been destroyed, Fury's the main villain in these first couple of stories, and, well... children. Eventually eight of them.) but hopefully it's written well. Read on to decide for yourselves; thanks!**

* * *

Natasha felt absolutely horrible as she stood there waiting for the few minutes to be over – for the test results to show up – and if she was right about why, Clint Barton was going to die. Sure, there were sparks there between them and they were great partners as agents for S.H.I.E.L.D., but any part of their relationship that might be labeled as romantic was only physically so. They slept together frequently enough, but their jobs left little room for emotional attachments, let alone a freaking _child_! And the fact that he had put her in this position was exactly why, if she was right, Clint Barton was going to die.

Right after she destroyed the test upon which two little pink lines had just popped up.

She curled her hand around the test and practically ran to S.H.I.E.L.D.'s shooting range. She tied the little test onto the bull's-eye of the target and took precise aim. Her first round was shot perfectly, but then she began to think about what the test result meant and the rest of her shots fired were done with shaking hands at best.

She was pregnant with Clint Barton's baby. She was _pregnant _with _Clint Barton's baby_!

Natasha also knew full well that there was no way that he would take that news well – that anyone was going to take that news well, actually. Fury was probably going to fire her or Clint, more than likely both of them.

That's when the thought came that Fury couldn't fire Clint if he didn't know the other agent was involved. Sure, Fury would suspect it, but Natasha and Clint were both very good at covering up their tracks. She already knew that Fury would believe her, at least after a while, if she told him that she didn't know who the father of the child was, and she also knew that there was no evidence linking her to being involved with Clint. The two of them were very good at keeping themselves protected from _those _kind of slipups, if not apparently the kind that involved having kids.

The idea of an abortion slipped inevitably into Natasha's mind in the next moment – after all, wouldn't that be the easiest solution? – but she shoved it out again just as quickly. With as many lives as she had taken from the world, it was high time that she brought one back into it; atoned a little bit for the blood on her hands, if you will.

She couldn't raise the child herself – she wasn't stupid enough to believe that her job would allow for that – but there were plenty of families out there looking for a baby to adopt, right? And unless a better opportunity somehow presented itself out there, that's what she was going to do. Give her child up to be raised by someone else.

But that still meant that she there was eventually soon going to be a little Hawkeye Jr. running around in the world somewhere.

She would tell Fury first, then, she decided, refusing to acknowledge that she was chickening out on facing up to Clint just yet.

She holstered her gun and thought some more about it as she took down the now unrecognizable pregnancy test and threw it away before starting towards Fury's office. Maybe she could send the baby back to her mother country, let him or her grow up in Russia somewhere…

* * *

Or maybe not…

Fury was being way too calm about what she had just told him. He was leaned back in his chair at his desk and staring right through her, deep in thought. He had just come up with some sort of an idea – a profitable one by the look on his face – and they both knew it.

"Agent Romanoff," he said calmly, looking at her with one sharp eye. "Let me get back to you on this; I think I may have an idea that will benefit us both. Until I do, don't get rid of the baby or tell anyone else about it, understood?"

"I don't have that much more time, director," Natasha said, raising her concern.

"Then I'll be quick about it. Right now, your job is still to follow my orders, are we clear?"

"Yes, sir."

He nodded and gestured towards the door. "Good. If that's all you wanted to discuss with me, then you're dismissed.

"Thank you, sir," Natasha replied, turning towards the exit and shoving away the disquiet that wound its way through her.

* * *

"Reassignment?" Natasha repeated dumbly as she stared at her boss a week later.

"It's only a temporary reassignment, Agent," Fury reminded her patiently. "Only until the child is born. For the sake of your own privacy; after all, we both know that it isn't plausible for you to raise this child yourself. Also, we're both well aware of the fact that you and Agent Barton comprise S.H.I.E.L.D.'s best partnership, and I'm sure that you don't want this pregnancy affecting your working relationship any more than I do. Am I right in all of my thinking here?"

"Yes sir," Natasha said stiffly.

"Then I will be accompanying you to Oman later this evening."

Natasha felt a flash of shock hit her as she clarified, "Oman, as in Asia?"

"Nizwa, Oman, to be exact," Fury replied in his normal monotone. "You and Agent Barton do work for S.H.I.E.L.D. world-wide, and I don't want to run the risk of you two coming into contact with one another until this child situation is taken care of."

Natasha took a calming breath, knowing that what Fury was saying made perfect sense. "Of course, sir. What time should I be where?"

"Meet me at the airstrip at ten p.m. tonight."

Natasha nodded obediently, and Fury dismissed her. She walked away, relief and that same inexplicable unease warring within her as she left.

When she climbed aboard Fury's private jet later that night that same feeling was back, only it was becoming harder to get rid of. But Natasha wouldn't have been able to stand herself being the brilliant assassin that she was if she didn't know how to compartmentalize as easily as she knew how to shoot a weapon, and that was what she did then as she settled in her seat across from her boss.

Once the plane was in the air, Fury and Natasha both unbuckled and Fury reached for a bottle of wine and a couple of glasses, saying companionably, "About that idea that I mentioned getting when you brought your little problem to my attention… I have a proposition for you."

* * *

**Reviews are my new best friend, if you feel inclined to drop me one, especially since I'm not sure how I'm doing with writing the characters in character. Thanks!:)**


	2. Chapter 2

Natasha didn't say anything, just looked at Fury intently as she shook her head to decline the glass of wine that he offered her.

He took having her full attention as his cue to continue and started what she soon realized was his sales pitch by saying, "I told you earlier today that Agent Barton and yourself are among this agency's finest."

Natasha nodded slowly.

"An unfortunate fact of our world is that there will always be more bad guys out there to fight, and, because of that, our world will always need more protectors in this world like you and Agent Barton. Furthermore, all of the enemies that the two of you have made in your line of work pose a constant danger to you both, and now to your unborn child."

Natasha stiffened at the latter thought, although she knew that he was perfectly correct.

"With those two thoughts in mind, I have spent the last week putting together an idea and getting it approved by the highest-ups in the agency: The Junior Initiative Division."

"The what?" Natasha asked almost incredulously as she laid a protective hand on her still-flat stomach.

"Junior Initiative Division," Fury explained. "At the very least, it will teach children like your own – the children whose parents have made plenty of enemies thanks to S.H.I.E.L.D. – how to protect themselves. Then, once the child becomes of age, they will be given the _option _of coming to work for S.H.I.E.L.D. if they would like to. It's a program to keep these children safe, agent."

"But where would these children stay if not with their parents, theoretically speaking?" Natasha asked, careful but giving this idea her full attention.

"S.H.I.E.L.D. is in possession of some currently unused land in Vermillion, South Dakota, and if we're given a reason to build a place there for these children," Here he nodded pointedly to Natasha's midsection. "Then there we would have a house and a training center, possibly even a private school."

"And when do you think you could have all of this done by?" she asked skeptically.

"By the time the child you're carrying has need of it, if not before. Don't doubt S.H.I.E.L.D.'s power and ability, Agent Romanoff."

"Not at all," Natasha said quickly. "It's just that if I am to leave my child there, I want to know what's going on where he or she will be."

"Of course," Nick Fury straightened up, realizing that he was succeeding thus far in reeling her in. "There will be a housemother there at all times, as well as trainers and teachers for both intellectual education and whatever self-defense the children might want to learn. This place would be here simply for the purpose of keeping these kids safe and giving them a protected place to grow up until they can take care of themselves."

"Not to make more soldiers for S.H.I.E.L.D.?" Natasha asked bluntly and unapologetically, looking him straight in the eye.

Fury didn't even blink, not at the question nor as he nodded, saying, "Right."

Natasha took a deep breath, considering her options before she said heavily, "Fine."

"I'm sure I don't have to tell you that this must be a top secret. Do not tell anyone – not even Agent Barton – about your child or the Junior Initiative Division."

She nodded. "Certainly."

"And you understand that it is for the safety of the child that once the baby is in the JID, there may be no more contact between that child and the child's parents?"

Natasha bit back the tears that rose in her throat, nodding again, this time without speaking, to show that she did in fact understand.

Her boss's expression became pleased as he nodded, answering almost cheerfully, "Good."

But Natasha, on her part, suddenly didn't feel so good.

"Excuse me," she gasped, surging to her feet and darting into the jet's tiny bathroom in just enough time to reach the toilet before she lost her dinner.

Over the sound of her own misery, Natasha never heard Fury mutter into his Bluetooth, "That's a go on J.I.; she just bought it."

* * *

Nick Fury had been a very busy man while Natasha Romanoff had been away in Oman. He had personally seen to every aspect of the building of the JID headquarters in Vermillion – not an easy task when it was project that was being kept under wraps and going on over 1,300 miles away from the S.H.I.E.L.D headquarters in New York City. He had also been the one to pick the woman whose job it would be to act as housemother at JID, a woman who already worked for S.H.I.E.L.D and had shown reassuring loyalty to the agency, Agent Maria Hill. Not to mention that he, Agent Hill, and another one of Fury's most trusted agents – Phil Coulson – had been scouring the globe for something that might not even exist…

See, the thing was, the Junior Initiative Division was called "Junior" for a reason. Fury had long ago picked a group of people – unusually talented or strong people (at least most of them were people) – that he would like to see come together as a team of guardians of earth. Superheroes, if you must, although he had coined the term "Avengers" in his own mind as being more fitting for them.

The tech and weapons god, Tony Stark.

The literal god who had popped up in New Mexico a few months ago, Thor.

The monster inside of a man, the Hulk, Dr. Bruce Banner.

And S.H.I.E.L.D.'s own agents, Clint Barton and Natasha Romanoff.

The Junior Initiative Division would be comprised of the second generation of these people – literally their children, if he had his way. And that's what he and his two agents were looking for; trying to find out if these people had any children.

As it was, Agent Romanoff had returned two days ago with her newborn son, Blaine Barton, in tow. Fury and Agent Hill had met her at the airport where the assassin had been surprisingly close to tears while saying goodbye to her child before handing him over to Agent Hill. After that, Agent Romanoff had lost herself in her work and Fury had yet to see Agent Hill back at S.H.I.E.L.D., which was entirely expected if she was to be caring for a newborn almost twenty hours away.

Agent Hill's absence was so very expected that Nick was in fact surprised to see her when she came into his office and shut the door behind herself, saying in quiet excitement, "I think you'll want to see this."


	3. Chapter 3

And that was how Jane Foster found a stranger by the name of Nick Fury standing on her doorstep the next afternoon, claiming to be a colleague of the father of her unborn child. He spun her some story about her child needing to be protected from the enemies that Thor had made while here on earth, even from the chance of Loki's return to their world. And of course his organization could offer her kid better protection than anywhere else in the world.

It was a good story, Jane realized, and she knew too that it was not an unreasonable one. Thor had to have enemies, and chances were her and Thor's little daughter might just get caught up in the crosshairs of something messy if she wasn't careful.

Although Jane didn't trust Director Fury anywhere near enough to hand her daughter over to him once she was born, it got her thinking. Should her baby ever need protected from something like what Director Fury had brought up, Jane would never be able to provide that – but she knew someone who could.

So she talked Darcy into helping her out on the monumental project, and by the time that little Eif – the name was that of a Norse goddess, and Jane was trying to help her connect with her father – arrived, Jane and Darcy had found a tiny portal to Asgard. It wasn't big enough for an adult to go through, but Eif would fit easily for as long as it took to get her to her father.

Since Jane hadn't realized that she was expecting his child until after Thor had already disappeared, she could only hope that once Eif reached him, he would figure out what had happened and who the baby was.

* * *

Jane was a sobbing mess when Darcy showed up at her apartment on "the big day."

"I can't do it, Darcy!" the astrophysicist wailed. "I cannot just beam my own daughter up to Asgard for forever!"

Darcy sighed down at the pile of snow she had just stepped in – inside of the apartment – and shook it off of her boots; sliding her coat off as well as she looked first at her boss and then behind her at the little blonde in a bouncy seat. "You have to. For Eif."

"But maybe I don't have to," Jane said, frantically pacing. "I'm her mother; how could there be anyone in the world better for her than me? And she's just a little baby, it's not like she can do anything destructive!"

Darcy cocked her head to the side, watching Eif as the infant began to sluggishly move her hands. Suddenly a snowball came seemingly from Eif's hand and hit Jane squarely between the shoulder blades. Darcy opened her mouth to say something, but words were proved unnecessary when the next snowball came flying so hard that it hit Jane's fishbowl and sent it – fish and all – careening to a shattered mess on the floor. So instead, she just looked at that mess before pointedly raising her eyebrows at her boss.

Jane began to sob even harder as resignation set in, and Darcy sighed again, having mercy on the gaping fish and moving to put him in a cup of water while she cleaned up the shards of glass.

"Come on, Jane," Darcy said, trying to be her own clumsy version of soothing. "You know Thor will take great care of her!"

"I know, but that doesn't help the fact that I'll never see her again!"

"She deserves to be with people… or gods, or whatever they are… who can help her control the snow flurries, Jane. I mean, if that's what she can do when she discovers her hands, what the heck is she going to do when she discovers boys?!"

Jane smiled wearily and laughed tearfully, and Darcy returned the gesture.

"So come on," Darcy said, sounding much more cheerful then what all of this was actually causing her to be. "Let's go get this done and over with – like ripping of a band-aid."

"So Eif can get the help she needs," Jane said, needing to hear it again as she gathered her tiny girl into her arms for the last time before they headed across town to the portal.

* * *

But the thing that no one on Midgard realized was that Thor was no longer on Asgard. After meeting – and deserting – Jane he had moved to earth permanently to be able to concentrate on protecting the planet that he loved, having complete faith in his father as ruler of the nine realms. When his father had died not two months after Thor's denouncing his title as crown prince of Asgard, Loki had moved swiftly in to take the throne and made sure that Thor was left totally oblivious as to what the goings on were on his home planet.

This had left Loki the king of Asgard, Jane in New Mexico, and Thor anywhere but those two places – and highly oblivious to everything that was going on.

And that was how it was Loki, not Thor, who was handed Eif only minutes after she had arrived on the palace steps via a portal from earth.

"Why do I want that earth thing?" Loki asked the guard distastefully from his seat on the throne. "And what is it even doing here on Asgard, let alone at the entrance to my home?"

The guard held the child entreatingly up toward his king. "Her name is Eif, and she is not just a mortal, my king; she brought snow with her."

"Snow?" Loki laughed. "In the middle of summer? I don't believe it."

"She can control an aspect of the weather, my king… like your brother."

Loki's temper flared long enough for him to snarl heatedly at the guard, "He is not my brother!" But then his interest was piqued as he realized what the guard was getting at. "You think that thing is a demigod," he muttered to himself before snapping, "Bring her here."

The guard hastily obeyed, and Loki realized that the wretched oaf was shaking as he placed the child into the arms of the king.

"You're dismissed," Loki said distractedly, looking down at the infant girl, and the guard fled.

It certainly appeared to him that the man was right. Thor's blonde hair, Thor's blue eyes, even Thor's horribly bushy eyebrows, all in a compacted female package in his arms – one around which snow was indeed still flurrying, even soaking the soft pink blanket the child was wrapped in.

A dark smile slid across his face as he realized that he was in fact holding what his subjects would call the rightful heir to the throne of Asgard.

"Yes," Loki whispered to her. "You are just what I need to establish myself as the only true king."

He laughed with glee, and the little one – Eif – began to cry in his arms.


	4. Chapter 4

Nick Fury was still ticked off at that mousey scientist from New Mexico for refusing him a piece of the puzzle that was the Junior Initiative Division. Even more so when he realized that the kid had disappeared the same month she had been born. He didn't mean the baby girl had just been taken off the grid, either; he would still be able to find her if that were the case. No, although Jane Foster was very much still in New Mexico, her baby had disappeared off the _planet _– gone to Asgard, more than likely, and Fury wasn't stupid enough try and follow her up there, or even to send Hill or Coulson to retrieve her. At the moment, she just wasn't worth the loss of those lives.

So he felt that the cosmos were repaying him a little somehow when the next kid that Hill and Coulson stumbled upon wasn't a kid, but _kids_. A set of twins, only a few months old, had recently been born to Dr. Betty Ross in Berkeley, California, and after that she had slowly receded from society. Best as he, Coulson, and Hill could figure, the poor woman was losing her mind trying to take care of this set of twins.

It was going to be painfully easy to get her to hand those two kids over to him.

So once again, Fury found himself on his private jet with a woman, only this time it was Agent Hill instead of Agent Romanoff. Once they were in Berkeley, he left her at the airstrip and went to Dr. Ross's home alone. Walking up the flagstones, he heard a woman scream out in pain on the other side of the door and smiled with excitement as he knocked on the door.

"Who is it?" the woman screamed from point beyond the closed door. He couldn't help but notice that it seemed to be reinforced DIY style.

"A friend of your fiancé's," he replied calmly.

The door was flung open to reveal a woman who was the very definition of haggard with a child hanging onto – or off of – each arm.

"Bruce left me," she said flatly.

He nodded, staring with interest at the little boy who – despite his only being four months old – was riding his mother piggyback style. He was looking quite a bit… green. "I know everything about that."

"Do you know what to do with these two?" Dr. Ross asked in desperation, trying to pry the boy off from around her neck with one hand while still holding her normal-looking daughter in her other arm.

"That's what I wanted to talk to you about."

"Then please, please, come in!" Once he was inside, he decided to play nice, taking the little girl from her arms so that she could handle the boy. He was already holding the girl when she warned, "Oh, I wouldn't…"

As she spoke, the baby girl – Fury had just been thinking that he was going to be disappointed if she hadn't gotten her father's "gift" – unleashed a furious scream and grew in his arms, turning a curious shade of green while her eyes popped open and turned from dark blue to hazel. She obviously wasn't as strong as her brother, but this coming from a four-month-old had Fury impressed anyway.

"Hazel doesn't like it if I'm not holding her all the time," Dr. Ross apologized. "And Hayne," she finally wrestled the boy from the vice grip he had on her neck. "Well, he just doesn't like the world. I can't even open the curtains anymore for fear of what they'll do or what they'll be seen doing."

"Then I have good news for you, Dr. Ross," Nick said cheerfully. "I have a way to help your children."

"Anything," Dr. Ross said instantly, even spitefully. "Whatever it is, whatever you have to do, I don't care. Just get these little monsters out of my hair. If you walk away from them today, I don't care if I ever see them again."

She didn't even like her own kids, Fury realized. Perfect. See, what had he said? Painfully easy.

* * *

"Back already?" Coulson asked, greeting them with a smile as they stepped off of the elevator at S.H.I.E.L.D. later that evening.

"The good doctor was amazingly easy to convince," Fury said dryly.

Agent Hill swept her hair back out of her eyes, adding tiredly, "The ride home with these two? Not so easy. The girl's not horribly strong, but her brother practically destroyed the jet."

"That's unfortunate," Coulson said with a small frown as he glanced at the two little ones – Hazel, hulked out but harmless in Fury's arms, and Hayne screaming rabidly in a makeshift cage that Agent Hill was holding under her arm.

Fury asked Coulson, "Why?"

"Because the next place we will find one of these kids is in Mexico; Mexico City, Mexico, to be exact."

"Does Agent Barton have a kid stashed there or something?" Agent Hill asked.

Coulson smirked as he handed Nick Fury the sheet of paper with the kid's info on it. "Even better." Fury handed Hazel off to Agent Hill, leaving her to juggle the two little ones and get them to their new home in Vermillion, South Dakota, as he scanned the paper and Coulson added, "This should be another easy mother to convince by one means or another. The boy's already around a year old, and the woman is an impoverished smalltime prostitute that Stark stumbled upon during a visit to Mexico's capital. My best guess is that he doesn't even know that little Andrew even exists."

"His mother's so high on crack, she probably forgot to tell Stark," Fury agreed as he read over the paper.

"So you think she'll hand him over to us?" Coulson asked.

"For the right price," Fury said flatly, knowing full well that if all else failed; he could simply buy the boy off of Rosa Veracruz.

Addicts always wanted money, and Fury – no matter the unethical means it took to get him – wanted Ms. Veracruz's son in the JID.

And so, within the week, Fury had gone to Mexico and made the "transaction," separating Andrew forever from his horrid mother and bringing the surprisingly intelligent child directly to Vermillion.

The problem that then arose, though, was that after these first four children, all trails seemed to go cold, and it looked like there were no more to be found. Four was a good enough group, but it wasn't as many as Nick had wanted, but time kept right on passing.

And then Agent Romanoff caught up with him at the wedding of Tony Stark and Pepper Potts and made his day a little brighter.


	5. Chapter 5

It had been a little over four months since Agent Romanoff had returned from Oman with Blaine, and she looked none too happy to have a reason to pull Fury away from the crowd at the wedding, but thanks to her the two of them still managed to find themselves alone and out of hearing range of the crowd.

"I need to go back to Oman," she said bluntly from between her teeth.

"Excuse me?"

She cocked her head to the side impatiently, and that's when he realized what she had been trying to tell him – what he hadn't understood at first. She was pregnant _again_. If this hadn't been such good news for the JID, he would be very frustrated with her at this point.

"You want to put this one in JID too?" he asked.

"How has it been working for Blaine?"

"Fine. He's even got a few playmates there now."

Agent Romanoff looked at the grass, turmoil flittering through her eyes as she bit her lip. A split second later she lifted her eyes to her boss and nodded resolutely. "Yeah, I'll put this one there too; siblings should be kept together."

"Agreed."

And just like that, two days later, Agent Romanoff was once again going off on another seven month assignment to Nizwa. Oman. This time when she returned she had with her a redheaded baby girl who had aptly been named Scarlet.

A year after the JID had been started upon the birth of Blaine Barton, there were now five babies living on the secret base.

* * *

The last infant that Fury acquired for the JID took a little more work to get control over. After all, it was a well-established fact that Tony Stark didn't trust Nick Fury so far as he could throw him – without his newly developed Iron Man suit.

It had taken some good money from Fury to make sure that – one year after the Starks' wedding and one month after the birth of their daughter, Dakota – Stark Tower was broken into by some _very _tech-savvy burglars. The director of S.H.I.E.L.D. had a mutual friend pay the three criminals to kidnap little Dakota and hold her hostage for a couple of days on the coast of Cameroon before S.H.I.E.L.D. miraculously swept in, killed the trio, and delivered Dakota back to her petrified parents unscathed.

It had been easy to convince the shaken mother that was Pepper Stark that the two men and one woman who had stolen her child away had harbored a vendetta against Tony, and Fury had let Pepper convince Stark of the same thing all on her own.

Oh, the joys of newlywed love.

Once Fury had let the troubled parents stew for a couple of days on the fact that their darling daughter could be hurt because of Stark and his enemies, he had gone back to their home, sat them down, and told them about the "very exclusive and highly protected specialty school in an undisclosed location" for the children of "S.H.I.E.L.D. members and people like Tony Stark."

Fury looked evenly at the couple on the loveseat across from him, almost scaring himself with how good of a job he knew he was doing lying to them as he finished, "Over the past couple of days, I've been talking with the school's board of directors, making a case for why Dakota should be taken into the school, and just earlier today I got them to agree to it. I came directly over to offer her the position."

"But she's only five weeks old," Mrs. Stark said, eyes dewy as she clutched her baby girl a little closer to her chest.

Fury looked momentarily to Stark to gauge his reaction and saw only the expected suspicion lurking in the brown orbs.

"The school accepts custody of any children that they believe are in danger, regardless of their age. Some of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s best agents are at this place making sure that these kids are given the best care and protection."

"Wait a second here," Stark perked up, leaning forward in his seat. "What do you mean 'accepts _custody_' of the kids?"

Fury looked at him as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. "That way the children cannot be traced back to their parents and put in danger because of the connection. I told you, Stark, this is a secure facility where the upmost precautions are taken to insure that security. It's hard on all parties, I'm certain, but surely you see it's what's best for the little ones."

Stark opened his mouth to say something else, but his wife cut him off, saying in a choked voice, "He's right, Tony."

And thus Nick was able to sit back and watch the gullible Mrs. Stark do the convincing all over again. When he walked out of Stark Tower the next day at Agent Hill's side – custody of Dakota having just been signed over to the woman – he was finally satisfied with the children that he had found.

But sometimes the universe just decided to give you a bonus.

* * *

_October 1945_

The British countryside was a beautiful place, and it was what Margaret Carter called home. She missed it with everything in her, but she didn't dare go back right now, not with the shape the war had put her home country in. Living in the United States wasn't really that bad, actually. Especially since she wasn't close enough to anyone here for them to realize that she was an unwed mother, or at least that she hadn't married Steve before giving birth to their son – that he hadn't even learned that she was expecting his child.

She loved Ryan – more than she had loved almost anyone on the planet – but she was fully aware of the fact that loosing track of Steve like she had had put her in such a place mentally and emotionally that she was in no shape to be a mother to the boy.

But she didn't think that she was crazy for believing that Steve was still alive out there somewhere in the Arctic. She just didn't know where. She did, however, know that Ryan needed his father, and so she had someone search for the infamous Captain America.

When the destruction of the war began to disappear from the country, she moved her son and herself to a home in the English countryside and then used the last of her money to hire people to go find Steve's location. Ryan was three years old when they found him and verified that he was still breathing beneath the ice. And that's when Peggy's plan for her son took shape inside of her fragile mind.

She could easily turn Ryan into soldier. The way the world was going, they were going need him even more in the future than he or Steve was needed now. When Ryan was older – if they hadn't found his father yet – she could figure out a way to freeze him beside his father and leave him there. That way the problem of his needing to know Steve would be solved… and she would be left without the stigma of being a single mother in the '40s.

It would be a win-win situation, right?

It was with this endgame in mind that she spent the next fourteen years conditioning her son to be Captain America's next sidekick, waiting for the day when he would be uncovered from the ice beside his father and someone would say...

* * *

_Present day_

"There's not just one of them here, sir – not just Captain America," Phil Coulson said into the phone, shielding himself from the Arctic iciness as he told Fury, "You're going to want to come down here and see this. I think JID might have found a new ward."

* * *

**Thus we end this story. Hopefully you enjoyed; thanks for sticking with me through the whole first story. Reviews would make my day; thanks! The sequel, "So They Grew" should be posted soon, so keep an eye out!:)**


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